A truck plowed into a crowd on a
shopping street and crashed into a department store in central Stockholm
on Friday, killing four people and wounding 15 in what the prime
minister said appeared to be a terrorist attack.

Swedish police said they had arrested one person after earlier
circulating a picture of a man wearing a grey hoodie. They did not rule
out the possibility other attackers were involved.

"We have a person who is arrested who may have connections to
the event in Stockholm earlier today," police spokesperson Towe Hagg
said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

"I turned around and saw a big truck coming toward me. It
swerved from side to side. It didn't look out of control, it was trying
to hit people," Glen Foran, an Australian tourist in his 40s, told
Reuters.

"It hit people, it was terrible. It hit a pram with a kid in it, demolished it," he said.

The standard apologies on behalf of the Swedish people and candlelight services are forthcoming.

Russia condemned the U.S. missile strike on a Syrian air base in
response to this week’s chemical attack as “aggression” and suspended
crucial co-ordination with Washington in Syria’s congested skies. The
country’s ministry of defence also announced plans to send a warship to
the eastern Mediterranean, according to the Telegraph.

“To protect key Syrian infrastructure a range of measures will be
taken reinforce and improve the effectiveness of the Syrian armed forces
air defence,” the ministry said in a statement.

The overnight missile attack, which marked the first time the U.S.
has directly targeted Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces, was
condemned by his allies in Russia and Iran but welcomed by the Syrian
opposition and its supporters, who expressed hope it signalled a turning
point in the devastating six-year-old civil war.

The Kremlin said President Vladimir Putin believes the U.S. strike is
an “aggression against a sovereign state in violation of international
law.” Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin believes the U.S. launched the
strikes under a “far-fetched pretext.”

(Sidebar: says the Supreme Annexer.)

Had Assad poisoned his own people, it was - perhaps - to avoid what he sees as further treachery. He, Putin and Iran can pick the carcass that was Syria clean whenever they like.

U.S. intelligence officials also believe North Korea has
links to the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center, which the New York
Times calls Syria’s “main research center for work on biological and chemical
weapons.”

Although North Korea’s support for Syria’s chemical weapons
programs predates the Syrian Civil war, Bruce Bechtol has described how it
increased during the war. Other reports have alleged that North Koreans have
been present in Syria during the civil war, where they have advised Assad’s
army in a number of ways, including by helping it operate vacuum dryers used to
dry liquid chemical agents and the SCUD missiles that are sometimes used to
deliver those agents.

In Idlib, the murder weapon was probably sarin, another
nerve agent North Korea is believed to possess in quantity, but which Syria
most likely produced domestically with North Korean technical assistance. If
Assad was the murderer of Idlib, then, Kim Jong-un was likely an accessory.

Four out of five Canadians feel income inequality is growing, and
most are unhappy with policy ideas that would likely align Canada with
Trump’s prospective policies, results say.

“The notion that the federal government would align policy or chicken
out from the best possible policy because they’re worried that somehow
that would run afoul of Trump’s agenda — that’s just not on with
Canadians,” said executive director Rick Smith, who is heading up the
institute’s Progress Summit, a gathering of about 1,000 progressives in
Ottawa this week.

A large majority of Canadians, 77 per cent, have negative opinions of
the U.S. president. On issues that “affect Canada and the global
community,” only 15 per cent of Canadians think he’s doing a good or
excellent job.

A full two-thirds characterized Trump as “a perpetual liar” and 75
per cent report being “pessimistic and worried” about his four-year
term.

Only 49 per cent of Canadians surveyed think Trudeau is doing a
“good” or “excellent” job dealing with Trump so far, the remainder
saying his performance has been “only fair,” “poor” or “terrible.”

Still, about 60 per cent say they’re either very or moderately confident
that the Canadian government can “effectively represent Canada’s
interests in future dealings with the Trump administration.”

You don't speak for anyone, leftist hydra.

"We know what's best for you."

A moral case for tax reform? How about term limits for the money-grubbing, inept thieves in Parliament and a referendum on how low politicians' pensions can go?

At the Fraser Institute and among others seeking lower tax rates, the
argument is framed as an economic one. Lower rates, especially top
marginal rates, would produce more growth and better jobs. Lower taxes
and other reforms will help the economy. “A tax reform plan that
improves incentives to work, save, invest and undertake entrepreneurial
activities can help enhance economic growth,” write Fraser’s Charles
Lammam and Niels Veldhuis in the 100th anniversary booklet.

Studies show that to be true, but economic arguments alone seem to
wash over the heads of most people. Taxes, especially income taxes,
should be a moral issue.

William Watson, in one of his Fraser essays, noted that the income
tax was introduced in part as a moral equivalent of conscription. In
1917, to fight World War I, the federal government began conscripting
thousands of young Canadian men into the military to send to Europe. The
policy was rightly seen by many as unfair and morally abhorrent, but
rather than stop conscription, the government brought in what Watson
calls the conscription of wealth. “If young men were to be conscripted,
wealth should be too.”

The government, to fix one wrong, brought in another wrong. Later,
however, when military conscription was ended, the other wealth
conscription continued and expanded in all directions.

The economic case for lower taxes and less wealth conscription may be
strong. But that case will remain a hard sell so long as the moral case
is not even being made.

Bill 84 is the Ontario government’s proposed legislation designed to implement Ottawa’s law on medically assisted dying.

It ignores the conscience rights of doctors like myself, who oppose
euthanasia on ethical grounds and, in its current form, will decrease
public access to palliative care.

In 2015, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario changed
its human rights policy to say doctors who oppose euthanasia must refer
their patients who want to be considered for it to another doctor to
carry out.

Doctors like myself argue this provision — known as effective referral — involves us in the euthanasia process against our will.

This despite the fact the federal law encourages provincial legislation to uphold the conscience rights of doctors.

Every other jurisdiction in the world that offers euthanasia to
patients — including the other Canadian provinces — protects the
conscience rights of doctors.

Every major religion and even secular humanist organizations have denounced effective referrals.

The Canadian, American, and Ontario Medical Associations all say they are unnecessary.

And yet one Ontario university medical school is already screening
candidates’ views on euthanasia in their interview process — a
discriminatory filtering practice.

Isn’t freedom of conscience enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

I have had as much as I can take for a while of the belligerent
atheists who come crackling through the Internet assuming the airs of
prosecutors, declaring ex cathedra that any suggestion of the existence
of a supernatural force or that anything is not explicable by applied
human ingenuity is medieval superstition. They have a trite little
formula that they don’t have to prove the existence of anything and so
have the high ground in any argument and then lapse into Hitchensesque
infantilistic mockery about pink-winged little men in the clouds. They
are repetitive and obnoxious and their fervour betrays the vacuity of
their position. I am declaring a moratorium for a month or so on trying
to reason with these self-exalted champions of reason.

Because there was so much misunderstanding and overwrought, misplaced
hysteria from some readers, I will wind this up by restating key points
with mind-numbing simplicity. We have no idea how the universe, or any
version of the life and context we know, originated. We have no idea of
the infinite, of what was before the beginning or is beyond any spatial
limits we can imagine, even with the great exploratory progress of
science. Miracles sometime occur and people do sometimes have completely
inexplicable insights that are generally described as spiritual. No
sane and somewhat experienced person disputes any of this. But there is a
cyber-vigilante squad of atheist banshees that swarm like bats over
such comments and are hyperactive philistines better responded to with
pest control measures than logical argument. ...As atheists renounce the roots of our civilization, they are troublesome
passengers, and are apt to be less integral defenders of the West in
time of challenge. They often dissent so uniformly and strenuously from
any theistic notions that they have effectively established a third
force that enjoys the society Judeo-Christianity has created while
despising Judeo-Christianity and also purporting, generally, to despise
the succession of dangerous adversaries that have threatened
Judeo-Christianity, including Nazism, international Communism, and
radical Islam.

There is nothing more arrogant than some militant faceless handle whose online smug can be felt kilometres away.

You are not clever, you are not insightful, you have no answers and no one thanks you for getting rid of Christmas.

Esteemed British actor Michael Caine revealed this week that he voted for the controversial Brexit late last year for “freedom.”

In an interview with Sky News, the actor said, “I voted for Brexit.
What it is with me, I’d rather be a poor master than a rich servant. It
wasn’t about the racism, immigrants or anything, it was about freedom.”

“Politics is always chaotic,” he added. “In politics, you’re always
going into areas you’ve never been before, so you’re going to get lost
and then you’re going to find your way, and then it’ll be all right.”

In 1999, Time Magazine named
Holiday’s original studio recording of “Strange Fruit,” a 1939 protest
song against lynching that was originally written as a poem by Abel
Meeropol, the “song of the century.” The song is also part of The
Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry and has been covered by
various other artists, including Herbie Hancock and Nina Simone.